Photographs of Vergennes (Vt.)

This collection contains 788 images comprising 122 years of
history in Vergennes, Vermont’s oldest city. Featuring a wide range of
topics, which date from the 1866 Civil War parade to the 1988 Bicentennial,
the collection provides a comprehensive and unusual look at small town life
in northern Vermont. These photographs document the full visual spectrum of
history in Vergennes, from businesses, industries, and transportation to
natural scenery, paintings, and portraits of people who once walked the
city’s streets.

These images were scanned from 35mm slides located in the Bixby
Memorial Free Library archives in Vergennes. The slides were made around
1987 from color photographs taken of the original images. The originals,
mainly of the Vergennes area but including several from Ferrisburgh and Lake
Champlain, had accumulated over the years in the library’s historical
materials repository. Many of these photographs, along with the slides and
accompanying inventory notebook, can be viewed with permission at the
library.

The authors of these photographs remain undocumented and
anonymous, except for a selection of photographs by local artist Harvey
Custer Ingham (1863-1931), a personal friend of local businessman and
library founder William Gove Bixby (1829-1907).

Mr. Bixby left funds from his estate for the founding of a
public library in the city of Vergennes, including the construction of the
imposing Greek revival library building on Main Street. The library opened
on November 4, 1912, and in 2012 celebrates a century of continued service
to Vergennes and the surrounding towns of Addison, Panton, Waltham, and
Ferrisburgh.

Published: May 06, 2011, University of Vermont, Bailey/Howe Library, Special
Collections

Rights: The photographs in this collection are protected by a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. You are free to
share these works as long as you give appropriate credit, do not use these
works for commercial purposes, and do not change them in any way.